Chronic street drunks - solutions elusive

Officer Tim Faye displays vodka taken from a man sleeping it off on a sidewalk. The imbiber was taken to a sobering center and not cited.

Officer Tim Faye displays vodka taken from a man sleeping it off on a sidewalk. The imbiber was taken to a sobering center and not cited.

Photo: Mathew Sumner, Special To The Chronicle

Photo: Mathew Sumner, Special To The Chronicle

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Officer Tim Faye displays vodka taken from a man sleeping it off on a sidewalk. The imbiber was taken to a sobering center and not cited.

Officer Tim Faye displays vodka taken from a man sleeping it off on a sidewalk. The imbiber was taken to a sobering center and not cited.

Photo: Mathew Sumner, Special To The Chronicle

Chronic street drunks - solutions elusive

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San Francisco has a drinking problem. No surprise there. The sight of someone passed out in an alcoholic stupor is as common as the summer fog.

But the sheer number of inebriates and the costly problem they present should make everyone want to stop and do something about it.

In a 12-month period, there were more than 8,000 incidents when someone was so incapacitated that he (they are almost all men) had to be confined to the County Jail, a police station cell, the emergency room or a city-sponsored medical sobering center.

Each ambulance trip costs taxpayers at least $1,652, which means more than $13 million is spent for medical transport alone a year.

And, of course, the frustration is that nearly half of those incidents involve a small number of "frequent fliers," who use the system as a revolving door. At the city's sobering center on Mission Street, 1,513 individuals were treated in one year. But 183 multiple offenders accounted for more than 40 percent of the 4,467 admissions a year. One man checked in more than 100 times in 12 months.

Kristie Fairchild knows how those stories end. She's the executive director of North Beach Citizens, which works with people in her neighborhood who are homeless and battling drug and alcohol addictions.

"I would say in the last 10 years there have been 15-20 people that I have known really well who died on the street," she said.

The city has made several attempts to get a handle on the persistent and expensive problem. The latest is Police Chief Greg Suhr's effort to mimic San Diego's successful Serial Inebriate Program. Sgt. Nicole Bruckert is supervising two bike-riding officers patrolling a limited pilot area in the Tenderloin/South of Market area who are looking for problem drinkers.

Once the men have been booked - either to a sobering center or jail - six times in a 30-day period, they are charged with a misdemeanor and sent to jail to await a hearing. There they can choose between getting into a treatment program or serving 30 days in jail.

The catch is that this will require several agencies to work together: the police, the district attorney, the courts and the public defender. So far it hasn't happened. District Attorney George Gascón's attempt to target chronic offenders who ignore orders to appear in court has yet to be successful.

The lack of cooperation among the agencies is frustrating. Surely no one believes the current system is working.

But Suhr says his theory is to press ahead.

"Instead of saying it is broken," he says. "Let's do what we can."

So far, Officers Duncan Gillies and Tim Faye have been out on the streets for only a month. In May, they had 36 encounters in which the subject was either sent to a sobering center or booked (usually drunk in public) and jailed.

Bruckert says that doesn't include the 10-15 citations the two hand out each day for infractions like drinking on the street, only to have those citations ignored.

"The guys just crumple them up and throw them away," says Fairchild.

However, each citation is an interaction, and the more Gillies and Faye contact subjects, the closer the drunks get to facing the consequences of jail or treatment. In an odd way, Gillies and Faye have already seen that.

They told one of their chronics about the serial inebriate program. When the guy rang up four diversions by the middle of the month, he looked like a sure bet to be the program's first subject.

But as the end of the month approached, the man proudly told the officers that he was cold sober. He'd cured himself, he said.

If only it were that simple.

"He also said he wanted to be a police officer," Faye said. "But he was intoxicated at the time."